BlogEssays & Ideas

Well... what a ride it has been. And what a week.

I am now sporting a six-stitch scar just below my right eyebrow - where my glasses cut straight into my skin, bone, and skull.

I fell on my face crossing a road in the dark on my way home from the first music call of my new work, The Sun Queen.

I am still bursting into tears at least twice a day, feeling incredibly fragile, suffering from concussion and overwhelm.

The irony that I now look like I’ve been in a sword fight, (or perhaps somewhat like a female Phantom of the Opera), is not lost on me.

In some strange way, it feels… appropriate.

Because this piece has been a battle.

It has been more than seven years of working quietly - diligently - on this musical-opera-drama.

Seven years of writing, re-writing, questioning, pushing, and holding onto a vision that, at times, felt far larger than me. At times it has tortured me, it has most certainly cost me.

We are now approaching our second workshop in London.

But this one is different.

After eight readings and three workshops across Australia and Los Angeles, this time we will invite an audience - an exclusive group - to witness the work as it stands now. To help us take it to the next stage. A theatre. A company. A production. A film. Something tangible.

And yes - after seven years of rewrites - am I excited?

You bet your bottom dollar I am.

Early on, I was lucky. Three producers came into my orbit and, quite simply, kept me going. They pushed me to keep writing. To keep refining. To not settle.

Sondheim famously said “Musicals aren’t written. They are re-written.”

Boy was he right.

My producers also did something else, something I didn’t quite believe in myself enough to do. They encouraged me to write the music. I was very unsure.

So, in a moment of both determination and deep insecurity, I decided I would go back to university and do a PhD in Music - to prove to myself that I could do it. Write music. Of course, I could sing. I was an opera singer. But could I really write it too?

And so I did. I started writing music. A lot of music. Somehow I realised I knew deep in my body what good melodies felt like when sung. Ok, I thought – let’s start there.

I spent those years writing the music for The Sun Queen as a part of my PhD. It was a strange, intense, and deeply personal apprenticeship—one where the work and my identity as an artist became completely intertwined.

[I am so grateful to The University of Queensland and my supervisor and composer, Dr Eve Klein, for believing in my vision for the work. Just before COVID, I also met two people – who would become two of my greatest friends and champions – two iconic Australian artists – Tamara Anna Cislowska – our finest international concert pianist, composer, lyricist and broadcaster and our finest, most loved classical composer, Elena Kats-Chernin. I cannot tell you how having a trio of incredible female musicians in my corner, who believed in me and my work, have kept me going. There have been so many others too who have played enormous roles in supporting and guiding me too – my dear friend from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Lyndall Dawson - the wonderful musical director, James Dobinson, cellist, arranger and composer from the QSO, Craig Allister Young, my dear friends - Natasha Veselinovic, Liz Buchanon and James Shaw and the first woman to sing through the role of Julie - the talented Chelsea Dawson, and also talented and formidable Natasha. So many people contribute into creating a big work like this and I know I have missed important creative people but these are my top line peeps. Forgive me if I have missed your name]

But after those early drafts, after the vision of the piece had fully taken hold, I remember thinking:

How on earth am I going to create something of this scale from Brisbane, Australia?

I was still recovering from the impact of COVID on my career. Name me an artist who didn’t suffer! It was tough, right? I was caring for my mother, who was living just around the block and navigating dementia. Life felt both incredibly full, overwhelming and incredibly fragile.

And then there was the bigger reality.

Australians are extraordinarily talented, we know this. Just look at the artists scattered across the world. But what we struggle with - because of geography, because of infrastructure, because of sheer distance - is exporting large-scale theatre works.

Especially new ones.

Especially ones without an existing commercial machine behind them.

And especially - if we’re being honest - if they are created by an unknown, middle-aged woman with a burning vision.

Yes, I am an opera singer.

Yes, I have had a career I am deeply proud of. I have sung all over the world. I’ve built a business that has employed hundreds of singers. I’ve written extensively for stages, festivals, and corporate events around the world.

But in the world of large-scale new musicals or opera-dramas?

That counts for very little.

I was not a young male composer being ushered through the system. I was not sitting on the coattails of established names in the West End or Broadway.

I was – simply - someone with a story to tell.

And a stubborn refusal to let it go. Stubborn. Refusal. To. Stop. Writing. I knew deep down I had to do it, to see it through. It was an important story with the potential to change and better lives.

So yes, perhaps the scar is fitting.

Because this journey has required resilience. It has required belief in the absence of validation. It has required continuing forward when the path was unclear, unsupported, or, at times, seemingly impossible.

And then there is Julie.

Ah Julie, my Julie.

I found your incredible story studying music history when I was a young Queensland Conservatorium of Music student, and you have haunted my thoughts for decades.

Julie d’Aubigny - a bisexual, sword-fighting opera singer.

A virtuoso of authenticity. A woman who refused to be contained.

Like today, she lived in a world tipping wildly out of control - and still, she chose to carve her own path through it. To fight. To love. To disrupt. To demand something better. A kinder world.

There is something in that refusal to be contained – in that insistence on truth, even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable - that feels deeply familiar.

So here I am.

In London.

On the brink of the next step.

All thanks to an incredible group of Queensland investors and philanthropists who have passionately rallied behind my work, led by the incredible Elizabeth Jameson – a tribe of Julie devotees – my beloved “Sun Queenslanders” – to whom I am so deeply grateful.

With a scar that looks like it belongs to a sword fight.

In the moment that I fell on Monday evening, it felt as though I was pushed from behind - by doubt, by resistance, by every voice that had ever questioned the path.

But you can knock me down as many times as you like. My resilience - and my belief in the power of story and music - will not leave me.

And – like Julie – I am back on my feet.

Still standing. Still building. Still believing that stories - told truthfully, courageously - can shift something in us. Can move us, even slightly, toward a better world.

And if that is what this work can do - if even for a moment it invites us to be braver, kinder, more human - then every fall, every scar, every year… will have been worth it.

Onwards.

Viva The Sun Queen!

PS.

If you’re wondering why something like The Sun Queen has taken so long - this is the reality of works of scale.

The musicals we now think of as “instant successes” were anything but…

All of them took years, often well over seven - to evolve into what audiences eventually saw on stage.

These works are not written.

They are built. Slowly. Carefully.